Re: Vehicles, and customizable products

Hi Thad:
I do not yet have a firm opinion on that, but I would first check whether the pure schema:ProductModel is sufficient for all relevant use-cases. The semantics is that of an "abstract prototype" of which

- specializations (via isVariantOf, e.g. a base model, a fully specified car model, ...) can be defined and
- materializations (via model, e.g. a tangible, drivable, crashable ;-) car) can be exposed.

This should already get us pretty far. Ideally, we can cover most of the automotive configurations cases without automotive-specific elements. That is worth a try.

I personally think that the beauty of a Web vocabulary depends on the fine balance between three challenges:

1. Finding conceptual equivalences behind terminological variety (many words for essentially the same things or structures).
2. Finding conceptual ambiguity behind synonymical used of words (e.g. spotting that product often means you have a product and an offer for the product).
3. Labels for the vocabulary elements that trigger the right intuitions among users (e.g. Place instead of PointOrPolygon) while keeping the elements generic (e.g. creator of an image instead of painter).

There is really a fine line between 
1. conceptual clarity on one hand and 
2. keeping the function of human language as a glue between human minds and models intact, on the other hand.

Martin

On Jul 26, 2013, at 4:19 PM, Thad Guidry wrote:

> Thanks Martin.
> 
> I agree that VSO covers most of what is needed.  Thanks also for pointing out the overlap with productontology.org.
> 
> So one thing that has caused MUCH confusion within Freebase over the last several years are the concepts of :
> 
> Trim of a Model
> Variant of a Model
> Generations of a Model
> Platforms (models and generations...very weird sometimes)
> 
> That Generations is a sticking point, because historically there has been some mixing of "Internal designations" that manufacturers use and the produced models within that generation.  Someone at Volkswagen or Renault, etc.. would have to help a bit there to clarify.  I do know that the Automobile Generation also has a direct impact on the Car Collecting world as well, so it's fairly important to get it right.  Based on my own research, it looks like we would ideally want an Alternate Internal Designation Name property under Generation:
> 
> automobileModel:
>     -generations
>     -modelYears
> 
> 
> generation:
>     -manufacturersAlternateName
>     -generationNumber
> 
> platform:
>     - ????
> 
> Real world example is the internal designation of a Porsche 997 - https://www.freebase.com/m/0327v_?props=&lang=en&filter=%2Fautomotive%2Fgeneration&all=true
> 
> Thoughts on Generations or Platforms ?
> 
> -- 
> -Thad
> Thad on Freebase.com
> Thad on LinkedIn

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martin hepp
e-business & web science research group
universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen

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Received on Monday, 29 July 2013 09:51:21 UTC